Brother of mine
by Rulisu
Summary: A trip down a back road covered in black ice puts Sora in a coma, leaving Roxas strapped to a hospital bed and their parents faced with a decision no parent should ever have to make. Sometimes, you never really know what you've got until you lose it...


Well hello thurr!

Welcome! Glad to have ya!

I've got a brand new computer and inspiration that would fill a jar the size of Kim Kardashian's ass, so let's get this partay started!

(Finally, a one-shot!)

**Musical Credit: **"Caramelldansen" It's Swedish and totally rawks mah sawks.

**Dedications: **To Axel (Rachel). My Nobody, little sister and dear friend to my alter-ego, Reno. You've listened to me rant every single time I've been bunnied and without your supreme editing skills, so many of my stories would have typos. And I'd have to kill myself. A nice, tall 'glass of soda' for you! (Rachel really is my biological sister. I just call her 'Axel'. I'm not that far gone. Yet.)

**ChaosGarden**, who has showed such enthusiasm in my work, that it has made me truly believe in myself as a writer. Your work and reviews makes this all so worthwhile. I know I should be working on "Fortunate Circumstance", but I was bunnied. It couldn't be helped! Thanks for being so supportive!Together, we will take over the world and it will be FANGIRLISH!!

And to David, who has so generously provided me with the money to see Dir en Grey in all their incredible, sexy goodness...LIVE! Unlike the rest of the world, you know what music means to me, and getting to see Diru live is going to make my existence! You're an amazing uncle and I don't know what I'd do without you!

**Summary: **Black ice and teenagers is a terrible combination and when Sora looses control of the family SUV, he and Roxas wind up in very bad shape. While Roxas lay strapped to a gurney, remembering a life that seems so far away, his parents are forced to make a decision about the lifesupport-bound Sora that no parent ever should.

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Unimaginable pain. That was just about the only way to describe the feeling that surged through every inch of Roxas's small body. It was intense, though it felt surreal. The kind of out-of-body sensation you get when watching eye surgery or any other unpleasant procedure on the medical channel, and it looks so real on your HD television that you begin to feel an ache in your own cornea. But Roxas knew this was real. So very, very real.

They hadn't been going fast. Sora wasn't distracted by his phone...even the radio was off. He'd just said only minutes earlier that he was turning it off so he could focus on the road. Roxas felt sick now remembering how he'd groaned in protest when Sora pressed the little blue button on the deck, plunging the interior of the Sorento into darkness, leaving only the time lit up on the dash. It had read 11:52.

Roxas was staring out the window at the passing shrubbery, lit to an acid green in the headlights of the car. The stars had been only barely visible through the leaves of the trees as they whizzed past. Roxas remembered pulling his jacket tighter, sighing in the heat coming from the vents in front of him in a gentle hum that matched the sound of the engine beneath the hood. He had sighed, closing his eyes and imagining the warmth of the bed he'd be slipping into once he and Sora were home.

Suddenly the sound of the tires on the road disappeared, though Roxas thought nothing of it. He heard Sora whisper an obscenity, heard his hands tighten on the steering wheel, making the faux leather squeak. Then came the moment of intense fear when Roxas felt the car begin to slide sideways. He looked up just quick enough to see the road flash across his line of sight before the groaning and shattering of metal and glass bombarded his eardrums.

There was an impact, sudden and final. He felt his head hit the cracked window, and slowly his mind began to haze. All Roxas could see in the dim light of the moon was the reflection from the snowbank beside the tree who's branches poked in the back window. And Sora, slumped over the steering wheel. He was far too gone at that moment to fully comprehend the fact that his brother didn't seem to be breathing. With a feeble hand, he'd reached for Sora's before his vision clouded as if someone had poured ink into his eyes and he was lost to the warm, disturbingly abrupt slumber that surrounded him.

Now he lay in a cold, stark white hospital bed, still as disoriented as he had been hours before. The only thing that made an bit of sense was the pain. His mind had no problem recognizing that. As he managed to shake the earlier events from his mind more and more, he discovered that his arms now resembled pincushions. He counted at least four needles in each arm, each attached to a different bag of clear fluid. There were pads stuck to his chest with a terribly itchy adhesive that pulled at his sparse chest hair, monitoring his pulse. They seemed to be attached to the machine by his bed, though it hurt to turn his head in any way at all.

It was when he found he couldn't move his head that he realized Sora was no where near him. If Roxas was hooked up to more devices than the government-detained aliens in the scifi movies, Sora must be...must be...

"Sora?" he rasped, his voice hoarse, his throat feeling like it was full of crushed glass. He tried calling for his brother over and over again, his voice only becoming more and more like a whisper with each try. A nearby nurse must have heard his call, for behind the curtain she came, switching out a drained plastic bag for a full one. Roxas felt the cold, seeping painkiller enter his veins and in a matter of moments, he was asleep again.

In his dreams, memories came rushing back. He and Sora were on the beach in Destiny Islands, their vacation home in the distance as they soaked up the sun's gentle rays. The ocean was even bluer than the brothers' eyes where it twinkled before them as if crusted with diamonds. Roxas shielded his eyes as Sora went running full force into the water after his friend Riku, who stood knee-deep in the turquoise waves. Sora jumped onto Riku's back, wrapping his arms around his neck and his legs around the firm middle, but Riku remained unmoved. Roxas could see that Sora was trying with all his might to tug Riku back into the water, but he wasn't about to tell the brunette that he was no match for Riku's fitness obsession.

Another slow progression of dreaming brought him back to much younger days. He and Sora gathered around the island in the kitchen, waiting eagerly for their mother's cookies to be finished, their spikes barely visible over the smooth surface. When the chocolate chip goodness was finally done, their mother spread them out on the island to cool, but Roxas reached for a piping hot cookie, stuffing it in his mouth whole. The heat burned the back of his throat and the roof of his mouth, bringing tears to his eyes. He began choking, spitting chunks of the cookie out onto the floor. Sora contained his chuckles and patted Roxas on his back, helping the younger brother spit out every bit of the offending sweet, pouring a glass of ice-cold milk to soothe his singed mouth. Later that evening, they sat in front of the television watching their favorite cartoon, eating the much cooler cookies, Roxas's head on his brother's shoulder.

As the medication sunk deeper into his brain, Roxas recalled the memory of coming home from school with a black eye and split lip. Sora had met him at the door, demanding to know who dared to lay a finger on his 'precious baby brother'. After much coaxing and pleading, Roxas told him that it was Seifer who had assaulted him. Without a word, Sora left to find the bully, despite Roxas's begging against it. An hour later, Sora stumbled into the house with an eye and lip matching Roxas's. So maybe they weren't a match for Seifer. It still made for good conversation over nachos. Roxas felt his chest swell with pride whenever he glanced at Sora's battlewounds. They were proof that his brother loved him.

Roxas began to feel the haze of the painkiller lift, and he fought to keep the images of Sora's smile in his head. There was a hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear, and try as he might, consciousness won. Roxas slowly opened his eyes, glaring at the bright fluorescent of the room. He recognized the voice in his head as his mothers. With tired eyes, he looked to her tearstained face.

"Sora." was all he managed. At his brother's name, his mother broke down into heavy sobs, griping the metal railing of the hospital bed hard enough to bend it. Roxas's mind raced when he saw his father come into view beside the crying woman that was his wife. His cheeks were splotched and his eyes puffy from tears he would not cry in front of his son. When he saw the hurt splashed across his father's face like blood over virgin snow, he knew. Sora was gone.

"How long?" he whispered, wishing the medication would do a better job of restraining his raw emotions though he could feel them struggling to break free of the Vicodin's grip.

"20 minutes." his father croaked, placing a large hand on his wife's shoulder as she heaved another almighty sob against the starchy hospital sheets.

"What..." Roxas swallowed tears. "What happened?" he whispered. His father sighed, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, his face aged a thousand years in a night.

"Sora hit some black ice. That's what the police said. You guys hit a tree and..." a tear slid down his face and he hastily wiped it away. "And Sora went into a coma."

"So he's in a coma, then? He's going to wake up?" Roxas felt a sickening wave of bile in his chest at the likely false idea that Sora might still be alive in another room.

"He wasn't responding..." trembled Roxas's mother. "So we took him off the life support."

Roxas's world came crashing down around him so fast he could almost hear the shards hitting the tile floor of the hospital. For a moment, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. They couldn't be serious. This had to be a sick joke. Sora hadn't died in the carcrash. He'd died by their hands.

"How could you?" Roxas gasped, tears flowing freely down his cheeks. His mother collapsed into wailing sobs that echoed off the monitoring equipment, though he looked to his father, his cerulean pupils burning with rage, boring a hole through the man's chest.

"We had no other option, Roxas." his father sighed. Roxas, despite the pain that shot through every inch of him, pulled himself up into a sitting position and stared at his father.

"You had options. He wasn't dead!" he cried.

"He was braindead, Roxas. He never would have been the same again." protested his father.

"I don't care!" tears now mingled with saliva as they poured down Roxas's face. "He still would have been Sora... he still would have been my brother..." he whispered, shaking his head. Suddenly, he looked up murderously at the dominant of his sires. "This is your fault, isn't it? You told them to pull the plug, didn't you?!" he shrieked.

"Roxas, please..." his mother begged, though he paid her no mind. He began tearing the sheets from his legs, then the needles from his arm and the medical pads from his chest, ignoring the pain that was dulled with rage. His limbs were still so weak that instead of launching himself at his father, he only collapsed in the man's arms, trying unsuccessfully to beat on his chest.

"Roxas, it's been over a month." his father tried to soothe him. The news was like a kick in the gut.

"It couldn't have been..." Roxas whispered into his father's polo shirt.

"You've been in a coma too, Roxas. You would wake up on occasion, but Sora hasn't been all there since right before the crash." his father choked on the words that seemed to carve paths of misery across his tongue as he spoke them. Roxas began to breathe quickly, trying to recall every dream he had. Had Sora been in any of them except for tonight's? Weren't siblings supposed to be able to talk to each other in comas or something like that? He felt sick enough to vomit.

"I didn't get to say goodbye." he sobbed, now clutching the fabric of his father's shirt as several nurses came running into the room. Roxas only now realized that pulling the monitors had caused a flatline alert to go off.

"Sir? Is everything alright?" one of them asked breathlessly. Roxas's father cast the woman a withered look, holding his last living son in his arms. They nodded knowingly and left the room in silence.

"I want to see him." Roxas murmured.

"It's better you don't." Roxas's mother finally spoke.

"Elena..." Roxas's father shook his head. Moments later, Roxas found himself alone in the morgue in a hospital wheelchair, looking up at the silver examination table and the covered body of his brother.

Shaking, he rose to his feet and took a few wobbly steps to the table, gripping the cold metal. Tears now pouring freely down his rosy cheeks, he pulled the clothe back, revealing Sora's mangled visage. A raw, anguished scream tore from Roxas's throat as he stared at Sora. One of his eyes had been completely obliterated in the crash, only a scar and obviously empty socket remaining. The rest of his face was littered with angry gashes, though the skin still had the glowing appearance of being full of life. Roxas fell to his knees on the cold tile, holding one of Sora's cold hands in his.

"I would have taken care of you..." he whispered to the floor. "Till the end of my life, I would have taken care of you, like you always took care of me. I love you..."

Roxas felt the floor begin to melt beneath him and the air around him grew suddenly warm. From the corner of the morgue, a blinding light split his vision in two. The world around him began to look like a twisted abstract painting. That's when he began to feel something in the hand that was holding Sora's. It wasn't cold, dead flesh. It was soft and thin. Linen.

The morning light was piercing as it assaulted Roxas's pupils, though he'd never been happier for it. Gasping, he held his chest where he gazed up at the familiar ceiling. With a trembling hand, he reached for his face and felt a sticky line of dried tears that flowed all the way to his neck. He continued taking deep breaths, now running his fingers over the skin of his arm to find only smooth peach that had not been tainted with spears of glass or needles. His chest bore no heart monitoring devices.

Still in a daze, he pulled back the lilac covers of his bed and stepped onto the soft carpeting of his room that he was suddenly so thankful for. Taking slow steps, he made his way out of his room and down the stairs. Still unsure if this world would melt away as well, he tread carefully into the livingroom where he was met with the most welcomed sight.

Sticking up above the back of the tan couch was a mess of unbrushed brown spikes. Sora's unbrushed spikes. With a squeal of uncontainable joy, Roxas ran across the room, toppling over the back of the couch and into Sora's lap, spilling his Lucky Charms and milk. The cold breakfast seeped through his pajamas and the marshmallows crackled silently between he and his brother, but he couldn't care less. He had his arms around Sora, who wasn't a comatose patient, wasn't a body in a morgue. Was alive. Was real, and right here in this very moment. Not a dream.

"Roxas! What the _hell?!_" Sora exclaimed, pushing Roxas off of him and attempting to set what was left of the cereal in the bowl back on the coffee table. Roxas stood and brushed bits of cereal from his front, only to jump back on top of Sora, beaming.

"You're alive..." he whispered into his brother's hair.

"Uh...yeah. Your point?" Sora grumbled, trying without success to push his younger brother away.

"Just... hold me for a sec, okay?" Roxas pleaded. Sighing, but smiling, Sora complied. Bearing the beyond gross feeling of milk drying on his skin, he pulled his brother close.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Bad dream." Roxas shuddered at the memory.

"It was just a dream." Sora soothed him.

"But it was so real. I could feel everything. Even the pain." Roxas groaned, trying not to bring back memories that were still like fresh, stinging wounds.

"Pain?" Sora became concerned, pulling his brother into view.

"Nevermind." Roxas shook his head. "You wanna go to the park or something?" he changed the subject.

"Absolutely." Sora beamed. "But uh... can I get cleaned up first?" he looked at his front, covered in tiny marshmallows and milk.

"Of course." Roxas breathed, still relieved that his brother was very much alive. He got off of Sora and went to the kitchen sink to begin scrubbing cereal out of his clothes. A chill ran down his spine.

"Oh, and Sora?" he called up the stairs. There was a pause, then a distant reply.

"Yeah, Rox?"

"Can we walk?" Roxas pleaded.

"You don't want to take the car?" Sora questioned, making Roxas stick out his tongue and gag.

"No way, dude. C'mon, we could use the exercise." he joked. A few moments later, he and Sora were walking down the sidewalk in the burning summer sun. Sora was going on and on about a girl in his class while scrolling through his MP3 player for a song they could listen to. Roxas smiled and wrapped an arm around Sora's shoulder, the older of the two not even noticing. He grinned, no longer taking a single thing about Sora for granted. From his untidy hair to his quirky habits and moody days, he was suddenly so perfect in his eyes.

"You love me, Sora?" he asked suddenly. Sora chuckled and ruffled Roxas's already spastic hair.

"Of course I love you, dorkface." he chuckled. Roxas shrugged off the nickname.

"You promise?" he pressed. Sora pulled his brother close against his side and smiled.

"I promise. Forever and ever. Or until mom and dad aren't around and I can beat you up any time I like." he chuckled. Roxas only grinned, looking up at the pure blue of the summer sky.

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Whooo!

I lurve happy endings.

You didn't really think I was gonna do that to poor Roxas, did you?

This is actually based on the freakishly real dreams I have about people that I love dying. They're a trip to wake up from, lemme tell ya.

Review meh!


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